Everyone talks about co-dependence, but was it?
Pia Mellody says: “Co-dependence is a disorder of immaturity caused by childhood trauma. When a child lives in a family of origin that is less than nurturing, their development gets retarded. Their body may be 30 but inside, they’re five.”
“When you’re 30 and you replicate a trauma, you might go back to being five. That’s the nature of co-dependence. Retarded development.”
“You never get over this illness. It’s the nature of man to experience these symptoms.”
“The co-dependent does not know how to love themselves from within. They experience a fluctuating sense of value. They’re depending on the universe to determine how they’re going to feel about themselves. They’re other-dependent for their sense of value. If you look to the universe to determine your value, you are going to get positive and negative things. So your internal sense of value fluctuates with what the external world is telling you about yourself.”
“If your self-esteem is going up and down, it means that you are other-dependent.”
“In the disease, I see myself as more-than or less-than. In recovery, I’m ok, you’re ok.”
“In the disease, you have trouble being who you are. You define yourself as bad or good depending on how you measure up.”
“In a dysfunctional family, a child is shamed for being imperfect.”
“When a person becomes allergic to who they are, they have trouble knowing who they are and being real. When they get in touch with the reality of who they are, they get a shame attack and feel worthless. You’ll start shrinking and want to hide yourself and not tell anyone who you are.”
“I live in reaction to who you are is a deeper disturbance.”
Mark Smith says everybody has addiction and compulsion problems and lists 11 of his own:
